1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display control device and method, and a storage medium, and more particularly to a technique suitable for use in operating a touch panel or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, various kinds of electronic device products are equipped with a touch panel. The touch panel is excellent in user interface, and is capable of intuitively displaying operations and responses. To operate such a touch panel, a technique related to movement of fingers on the tough panel and responses thereto from the system is described in e.g. Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-228971. According to the technique described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-228971, it is possible to change the operation of the system according to the distance between fingers on the touch panel. Further, this publication describes that when a plurality of fingers are detected, a predetermined operation is performed according to the distance between two of them at outermost ends.
Further, recent digital video cameras are equipped with a function called “index screen display” for showing a list of moving image data items stored in a storage medium to a user in order to enable the user to select a desired one of them. This is a function that extracts one frame image determined in advance out of each long moving image data, and arranges the extracted frame images on an index screen. This enables the user to select a desired moving image while watching the index screen, and reproduce and edit the selected moving image.
Further, in recent years, some of digital video cameras are capable of extracting not only one frame image, but a plurality of frame images at time positions corresponding to respective time points at intervals of a few seconds out of a moving image and displaying the extracted frame images on a display screen. The user can grasp an outline and flow of the moving image by viewing the frame images contained in the moving image at the respective time positions. It should be noted that the function that extracts and displays frame images at time positions corresponding to respective time points at intervals of a predetermined time period out of a moving image is called “timeline display”.
To manipulate the above-mentioned timeline display of a moving image by user's finger operation on a touch panel, it is necessary to detect the position and movement of a finger. On the other hand, although Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-228971 describes how the system operates when a plurality of fingers touch the touch panel, it is not a technique which is intended for the timeline display of a moving image. Therefore, there is a problem that the technique is not user-friendly enough for the timeline display of a moving image.
In general, in a personal computer, when copying an object displayed on a screen such as a file, the object to be copied is designated using a mouse, whereby the copy and paste operation is performed. Further, it is also possible to perform the copy and paste operation by combining an input using the keyboard and an operation using the mouse.
Further, as described above, some of recent digital video cameras are equipped with an edit function for cutting out part of a moving image stored in a storage medium to make a new moving image, or cutting out one frame of a moving image to make a still image. When a certain range of one moving image is cut out, it is necessary to designate two edit points, i.e. a start point at which the edit of the moving image is started and an end point at which the edit of the same is terminated. Further, when a still image is cut out from a moving image, it is necessary to designate a cut-out point indicating a desired scene in the moving image.
However, when the edit operation is performed on a digital video camera which is compact enough to be hand-held, the sequence of operations using buttons is troublesome. Therefore, to facilitate the user's operation, there has been proposed a technique in which the digital video camera is equipped with a touch panel on which an instructing operation is performed by using movement of fingers. In this connection, for example, as mentioned above, the technique related to movement of fingers on a tough panel and responses from the system is described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-228971. According to the technique described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-228971, it is possible to change the operation of the system according to the distance between fingers on the touch panel.
However, although Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-228971 describes how the system operates when a plurality of fingers touch the touch panel, it is not a technique specifically intended for an operation for copying a moving image or an operation for cutting out a still image. Therefore, there is a problem that the user cannot perform the operation for copying a moving image or cutting out a still image on the touch panel, and hence the technique is not user-friendly enough.
When editing a moving image by a personal computer, the moving image is edited using dedicated software. Particularly, when connecting two moving images, the two moving images are connected on the software to thereby create a new single moving image.
Further, some of recent digital video cameras are capable of connecting a plurality of moving images stored in a storage medium as a play list to thereby create a new moving image. In the operation of connecting a moving image with another moving image, first, a moving image to be connected is added to the end of the play list, and further, the order of the moving images is changed to edit the moving images such that a desired flow of the moving images is made.
Further, to enable users to easily edit moving images or the like, in a digital video camera equipped with a touch panel, there has been proposed, as described above, the method of performing an edit operation using movement of a plurality of fingers on the touch panel. The above-mentioned Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-228971 describes the technique related to movement of fingers on the touch panel and responses from the system in the operation on such a touch panel.
However, although Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-228971 describes how the system operates when a plurality of fingers touch the touch panel, it is not a technique specifically intended for an operation for connecting moving images. Therefore, there is a problem that the user cannot performing the operation for connecting moving images on the touch panel, and hence the technique is not user-friendly enough.